


the splinter in my fingertip

by corleones



Category: Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente, Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Russian Mythology, Soviet Russia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:05:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corleones/pseuds/corleones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name is only another pair of words like any other, like "fur" and "coat" and though you will often hear them said in conjunction to each other, there is no special weight to them, no special meaning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the splinter in my fingertip

In the first week of their most wild and blossoming marriage, her husband informs her that she will be not left out of the stories that people will write on his reign.

The tsarina raises an eyebrow, one pale hand lifting to raise the curtain of her hair from her face, fixing her husband with a look from her stormy eyes that he refers to as her slayer's gaze, his own private way of making light about her past, that vast country that she keeps the keys to, of which he has still only a faint and cursory knowledge.

"What sort of stories do you think they will write about me?" she asks, with the curious but satisfied air of someone who already knows the answer and is only posing the question to pick at their partner's brain, to see how far their patterns match.

"They will be cruel at first," he tells her, "Cruel and unforgiving but soon, the story tellers will grow to love you (as I have grown to love you) and then they will be kind and adoring." He reaches across the table that they were seated at to touch her face, to brush his hand against the side of her face, “And then they will be your subjects, as I am.”

Marya draws her face out of his grasp with a satisfied sigh and takes her fork back up again.

She does hear them, sometimes, in the streets as she goes past, the tales people tell about her and her sickle and her heart that thirsts for blood and not love but they do not bother her. Her name is only another pair of words like any other, like "fur" and "coat" and though you will often hear them said in conjunction to each other, there is no special weight to them, no special meaning.

Her name wanders the streets and lingers in the city's dark corners, baring an ankle to attract passersby and lure them into beds with dirty sheets and heavy pillows. Marya Morevna cares nothing for her name.

What she does think about, from time to time, is the prospect of words being strung together to in sentences that talk about her, her as she is and not her as she is perceived, words that build images along the tapestry of her life.

She finds herself waiting for a drop of words to fall into her lap, like the sunshine; clear and bright and illuminating; words that will hang from her throat like a necklace not a noose. She would keep it private she thinks, fingers splaying gently past her collar bone and against her breast where it sits under the silk of her dress.

Her husband resumes his meal, leaving silence to fall at their table. The tsar and his tsarina at their dinner, sitting in the swell of a nation’s stories.

-

There is a moment, four weeks from this dinner when this conversation with her husband has almost slipped her mind as many such conversations tend to do and she is waiting by the road, dressed like a woman not a ruler of lands and this is where she meets him again.

Silver tongued liars are a weakness, she remembers and he has always been the most convincing of them all.

He cups his hand around the space between their faces as he leans in to light her cigarette.

"I expected you in furs," he breathes but she has learned to love the cold, learned to breathe in the bitter chilled air and this is something he knows, because this is something he taught her.

She only smiles and swallows her tongue till he is the only one left talking and her body begins to shiver beside his.

-

"I have tried to forget you," she lies, when the final breach comes and he is laying her out on her marriage bed, fingers making quick work of her dress as she arches back.

Koschei smiles and runs ink stained fingers up the bones of her hip.

"I have never made the attempt," he promises and with his tongue, he plays out the words on her skin that will use to make her immortal.

As all of Koschei's gifts it is one that comes with strings and his own specifications and equally regular is the way she drinks them up, never caring for the label that hangs around the neck of the bottles.

"You are a terrible liar," he whispers, finally with his own strange tenderness as his body covers hers among the distressed sheets and Marya Morvena shuts her eyes and lets her body speak.

-

Her husband dreams of ravens holding siege outside their doors and Marya Morevna dreams of her body resting in a cold place while her soul stays in Russia with her lover's words.

"I can't kill you," he says and she smiles.

"But you won't prevent me from dying."

-

The dungeons start as a game; the space beneath her home is dark and wide, the door falling open like the mouth of a cave and she beckons him inside with swishing hips and twisted mouths, "it will be private, here," she whispers, flattening her fingers against his chest.

Koschei follows and allows her to bind him. There is not need for the constraint, he submits to it. He holds out his wrists and Marya Moreva runs her thumbs over them, where the bones stick out from the flesh.

When she locks the door that first night, her body heaves against it as if she thinks the length of her limbs will muffle out any sounds he may make.

But there are never any sounds, not a thing. He is as silent as a grave or a city in the thrice ninth kingdom of Stalin.

-

Sometimes, she feels she can hear him, even as she walks through the city in her ordinary dress and ordinary hat, spine shaking off the ice as she steps through the storm;

He is saying _I have all your stories, Marya Morevna and all your lives within them_.

She savours the sound like a charm.

-

Her husband, the tsar has many names all of them earned. The day he lets Koschei the Deathless drink water from his pail, he earns the title Fool. Ivan the Fool pours the water; Ivan the Fool lets loose the chains.

So, the legend goes, Koschei stretches himself up to his full height and bellows "you will never see Marya Morevna again" from deep in his belly.

But in reality, it is a low scratchy growl and the two, the tsar and the deathless, circle each other like snarling dogs, like men.

Ivan the Fool does not believe him. This is his last mistake.

-

In the country of the past, the time before birds flew to the doorsteps of kings to find brides, before stories were written about tsarina's with tangled black hair and mysterious pasts, before, in that country, in the kingdom of Marya Morevna's prime;

She had two black eyes and a pair of fine lips that spoke better than most, she had a body, a slight frame of bones that Koschei kept his heart in.

Now, she holds his death and it swells within her, her skin bright and gleaming and she carries it inside her like a torch.

"Gift or curse?" she asks, her voice glowing.

"That's not for me to decide."


End file.
